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Since it’s me, let’s get the whole accents thing out of the way here. With a few exceptions—Sam Trammell and the guy who plays the sheriff and Arlene and Terry (OMG! Is that Zack from Gilmore Girls? Why yes, it is! I love him so!) and Sarah Newlin—the accents are all ridiculously fake. The lady who plays Arlene obviously exaggerates hers for the sake of the show, but there’s a way she has of speaking that makes it clear that underneath hers is a real one. But everyone else? EXCRUCIATING. I really thought I wouldn’t want to watch the show because it would annoy me so much, but these are, by and large, so incredibly bad that I kind of love them. Anna Paquin’s is the most annoying and Stephen Moyer’s is the most fun—hearing him say “Sucky is mahn!” will never, ever stop being funny. Ever.
Now. Onto the characters thing.
Sookie
I wish someone else had been cast to play Sookie. Anna Paquin is a good actress—and I’ll love her forever because of the family movie Fly Away Home, which I must have watched like sixteen times when I was younger, almost as many times as I watched Flipper and developed an intense love of Elijah Wood…but that’s another story. Anyways, she’s a good actress, but I feel like she’s miscast. From the writing alone, I should adore Sookie. But I don’t. I’m pretty apathetic towards her, really. I find the mind reading thing fascinating (don’t you just love how Stephanie Meyer inverted the whole mind reading dynamic between the main couple?), and the show does a really, really good job of showing how that must really be a curse for her. I’m very impressed by the way it’s handling that. I really hope they keep this Barry kid around and really explore her relationship with other psychics; I think that could be a real strong point of her arc. But other than that, I’m kind of “meh” about Sookie.
Bill
Same thing with Bill. Stephen Moyer definitely looks the part. In one of the first couple of episodes, Sookie describes him as “handsome, in an old fashioned kind of way” and he really, truly is. Looking at him, you can totally believe that he’s over a century (just as a bit of contrast, I never felt that way about David Boreanaz). But I can’t really invest myself in him, because I don’t know what it is that makes him different from the other vamps—from Eric or Pam or someone like that. There’s no reason for it like there was with Angel and his soul. Even Spike had the chip, and we got to watch his journey unfold over seasons. But I don’t know what the catalyst is for him, nor do I understand why he loves Sookie.
Theirs seems to be the whole “great, epic, love-at-first-sight” trope, and I’ve never gone for that. It didn’t work for me with Buffy and Angel, I roll my eyes a bit at Romeo and Juliet, and we all know how I feel about Twilight. There is no reason at all for me to be invested in their romance, really. Nor is there really a reason to be invested in his journey because I don’t understand where he’s coming from at all. They’ve given us a few flashbacks thus far—the ones with his maker were pretty interesting, but again, we didn’t actually see why he went from screwing her silly in the blood of that girl to wanting her to kill him to get away from her. If they actually give me some reasons, I might start to really like him. As it is, I’m still pretty “meh” about him, too.
But there’s one thing I hate about him. And that is his obsession with “protecting” Sookie. Look, I know she isn’t Buffy. She physically can’t protect herself against vampires or even the average human man. I get that, and it’s cool. Him wanting to keep her out of danger or needing to step in when she’s in harm’s way is all well and good with me. But it’s all he talks about. His ambition in life seems not to be to be with her and love her, but to protect her. The whole thing smacks of protecting the little delicate Southern belle, and he doesn’t realize how messed up this is. One would think that after all these decades he would have discovered Faulkner, but he obviously never read Sanctuary, or he would know how such things turn out. It would be absolutely awesome if the show decided that this obsession was a result of the culture he was raised in and of some misplaced affection for his maker and a desire to protect the girl this time around. It would be awesome if it explored that and had him come to realize how messed up it was. But it doesn’t really do that. It is what it is, and that is truly disappointing. COME ON, BE SUBVERSIVE.
Tara
I totally didn’t buy the Tara/Sam thing.
Sam
Sam’s a good guy. I like him a lot. His romantic relationships make him yawn—his obsession with Sookie, his fling with
Jason
Jason Stackhouse is an awesome character, even if he is the world’s biggest toolbag. And I’m really impressed by Ryan Kwanten. I tend to get annoyed with stupid people in RL—I always suspect that they’re just ignorant out of laziness or shallowness or selfishness and that if they really tried they could show more interest in the world and grow (and, yes, I realize that’s horrible of me, but this post isn’t about my issues). Jason, however, belongs to that group of people who really are just as dumb as a bag of rocks. His saving grace is that he’s A) adorable and B) naïve enough to make you think he actually might want to do right, if he could only figure out what that is.
His endless travails with the women he sleeps with growing up dead got a bit old—and goodness knows he needs to develop a better attitude towards women. But his relationship with Eddie really started making me think there was more to him than meets the eye. And I believe his newfound repentance is sincere. Too bad he’s gotten mixed up with the worst possible people to find a new path.
What I really like about his arc so far this season is that, through his eyes, we’ve seen how messed up both sides are. I’m a big fan of the idea of balance, and so this appeals to me. On the one side, we had Amy (which, how awesome was Lizzy Caplan? Yes, yes, children, that was indeed Janice Ian from Mean Girls. What great casting!), who was the liberal, hippie-dippie side of things and supremely messed up. On the other side, we have the Fellowship of the Sun (more anon), which was super-conservative and also supremely messed up. Jason hasn’t developed a strong enough personality to make up his own mind yet, so he gets pulled into orbit around whatever the biggest gravity source around him is. I halfway suspect that he’ll next be pulled in by the vamps, which would be really cool to explore.
He really is a douchebag in a lot of ways. And dumber than a bag of rocks. But the thing that makes me think he’s redeemable is the way he chose his sister over the church. When Sookie was in a bind, he was willing to do whatever he could for her. *ruffles his hair* Keep on being awesome, you dumb little boy. Maybe you’ll grow up someday.
Lafayette
Is made of awesome. Which is, I think, the point. That is one brilliant performance by Nelsan Ellis, who took a part that could have been just the flamboyant drag queen stereotype and always makes me see that there’s more going on with him. There’s something deeper than the stereotype. And the twist with him getting captured by the vamps? CHILLING. The scene where he tells them to turn him instead was perfect. Because that’s exactly how he would react in that instance. He’s going to find a way out and take it. Now that he’s free, though, he seems to be pretty broken by it (though, to be honest, I had a hard time dealing with the scene where Pam cornered him in Merlotte’s—something about it rang false, at least until Terry showed up and it started becoming awesome again), and again, I’m very interested to see how his life unfolds. I suspect he’s the
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deadbrowalking of the show, which kind of breaks my heart.
Eric
Yes, yes, Eric is hot and kind of awesome. But we all know that, so let’s address the thing that actually makes him interesting: his loyalty to Godric. Yeah, there’s tons of slashy subtext (rapidly becoming text), but what I’m more interested in is what’s going to happen as Godric keeps acting differently than the other vamps. Also, are we supposed to think that he’s got an actual thing for Sookie? Or does he just find her useful? Because if he does have a thing for her, that’s a big too Mary Sue for me. I wouldn’t like it.
Sidenote about Godric: in the flashback to Eric-the-Viking scene? In the firelight? I found him so, so hot. Turns out that in the present in the light he does nothing for me. Sadness.
Jessica
She’s the one character who makes me feel like, yes, vampires can assimilate and have more in common with humans than not. It’s a brilliant metaphor for parenthood, of course, and she is so the angsty teenager and wonderfully played by Deborah Ann Woll. Even when she’s being annoyingly teenager-like, I still like her. I hope she gets into lots of scrapes and then out of them again and continues to be as great as she is now.
AND HOYT. I cannot even tell you how much Jessica/Hoyt is my OTP for this show, y’all. Apparently I have three major categories of OTPs I fall in love with. The snarkers: Buffy/Spike, Logan/Veronica, Lynda/Spike, even Ron/Hermione, etc. The happily married couples: Coach/Mrs. Coach, Wash/Zoe, the Fighting Agathons. And the too-innocent-for-words couples, which now in addition to Victor/Sierra also includes Jessica/Hoyt. They’re sweet and adorable and NOTHING BAD BETTER HAPPEN TO THESE TWO, DO YOU HEAR ME, PTB? SCREW OVER WHOEVER ELSE YOU WANT, BUT GIVE THESE TWO A HAPPY ENDING!
The Major Complaints
- The over-the-top dialogue. Especially from the vampires. Especially from Bill. (And Lorena.) Their dialogue consistently makes me groan and want to bash my head in. The first big scene where Sookie and Bill meet made me want to die. Which sucks, because there’s some great dialogue involving, say, Jason or Tara or Lafayette.
- I really liked Rene. I thought he was fantastic. UNTIL HE ENDED UP KILLING PEOPLE. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME, SHOW?
- Like I said, the actual stars of the show are kind of blah.
- Can we have more vampires with a sense of humor, please? That scene when Eric got the blood in his hair was a riot. I want more of that. It can be dark, gallows-type humor—I’m good with that, but I wish they didn’t take themselves quite so seriously. I think Buffy spoiled me.
- Again, like I mentioned, not enough of Eric’s backstory and motivations for me to really understand where he’s coming from. I get that the story is largely from the perspective of the humans, and that’s cool, but I want more than that. I really want to understand the way the vampires’ minds work.
- We need more strong female characters. Instead of women getting victimized and killed every few episodes. I know this sounds bad…but why don’t any men die? The only one who has so far was a child molester, out of a search for justice/vengeance. There just seems to be a lot of misogyny in this town.
- “AH MUST PRATECT SUCKY!” Shut up, Bill. Shut up.
The Happies!
- The side characters. Characters like Terry (who might be my favorite on the whole show), Arlene (who is way too great), Lt. Bellefleur (see what I did there?),
- The background drama. I love the idea of exploring human/vampire relations at the point in which vampires are first trying to assimilate into society…or not. Yeah, sure, sometimes some of the metaphors (for race or sexual orientation or whatnot) can be a bit heavy-handed, but there’s a lot of natural drama from setting it at such a time.
- The music. Have you noticed? A lot of it is really awesome, especially Bill and Sookie’s theme.
- THE OPENING CREDITS. About which I could write a dissertation. There’s so much going on there, some stuff that makes me angry, other stuff that makes me laugh, and the song is just perfect.
- Did I mention Jessica/Hoyt?
- The potential to dive into more vampires’ backstories. I can’t wait. Also, to find out what’s going on with Sookie’s psychic-ness.
The I’m Not Sure Yet
The Fellowship of the Sun. I have a lot of thoughts on this, and I may get even more rambly than before. Feel free to skip this part.
So the first little bit with them, I thought it was brilliant. Because Steve Newlin was clearly a stand-in for Joel Osteen. And since Osteen’s brand of “Christianity” is repugnant to me—and, for that matter, has nothing to do with what Christ actually taught (long story short, he’s one of those “health and wealth gospel” guys who preach that if you love Jesus, your life will be wonderful and you’ll always have money and never get sick and die in bed at ninety surrounded by fat grandchildren, and all I have to say to that is, “Tell that to the Christians who are being slaughtered in Sudan, buddy.” GRRRR!)—I was cool with the sporking him. He’s brilliantly cast—the guy who plays him is plastic-y with kind of blank eyes, and I loved it. And Sarah Newlin is just as brilliantly cast. The actress who plays her deserves all kinds of awards. I know to a lot of people she might come across as over the top, but look, y’all, I have known girls who look just like her and talk just like her and who seem to cling to the idea of religion because that way they can give up making any real choices (or, less often, as in Sarah’s particular case later on in the show, use “God’s will” to rationalize whatever the hell they want to do). Also, she looks plastic-y, too, just like Joel Osteen’s wife.
In addition to that, the whole idea of the Fellowship of the Sun rings true. There are always going to be fundamentalist groups on both ends of the political and/or religious spectrum who use their beliefs in pursuit of hatred or power or out of greed. Those who are petrified of anyone who’s different and for whom mercy or compassion are just words they toss around. It makes perfect sense within the context of the show that if vampires did emerge, a religious group would spring up in just this vein, would turn cult-like, and most likely turn violent as well.
But blurring them together doesn’t work so well for me. I’m not so cool with correlating Osteen’s specific type of television evangelicalism with a violent cult. I tend to hate television evangelicalism because it really does have mostly awful traits, and there’s no doubt in my mind that many of those big TV preachers are in it for the money and the power. I think Joel Osteen really does manipulate people emotionally and probably takes their money, too. But he isn’t violent. He is not Fred Phelps (that’s the God Hates Fags guy, who is one of the most repulsive people on the planet). I feel kind of bad for him because he may be a hypocrite (I don’t know—he may also be completely sincere) or something, but I don’t think he would ever be violent. If I was being clearly depicted that way on TV, I would be disturbed by it.
But like I said! The rest of the execution of it is so good! I guess it’s just that this isn’t skewering all cults or fringe groups in general—which I’m cool with. It’s skewering one particular guy who’s never made any violent overtures that I know of. I would be just as uncomfortable with someone skewering someone from the other side of the spectrum in the same way.
There's no way anybody read all of that, and I do not blame you. Not one little bit.
